5 Ways Small Business Can Use Pinterest

Gone are the days of Pinterest being a crafts and recipe site. OK, wait. That might be more than slightly overstated. Pinterest still does serve that purpose. But on November 14, with the introduction of Pinterest Business pages, they made it much easier for businesses to market their products. So what could you be doing with a Pinterest account?

Drive Site Traffic and Build Links
In order to sell your product or service, you have to get people to visit your site. By pinning unique, relevant content from your business website, blog, YouTube page or other site where you’d like to have your customers visit, you’re creating a path for new leads and conversions. Your “pins” might include images of new products, infographics, demonstration videos — anything visual and relevant.

Each pin will link back to your site, creating “link juice” that tells Google and the other search engines that your site must have some good content because someone is linking to it. People clicking on your pins will increase site traffic, while the link juice could help improve your rank on search pages so that more people find you (and then traffic will grow even more!).

Repins occur when someone likes your pin so much, they decide to pin it to one of their own Pinterest boards. This, in turn, creates another link back to your site, increasing traffic, building links and enhancing Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Optimize Pins for SEO
We already talked about how your pins create link juice, which is great for SEO. To further improve SEO, you should add related keywords to the text you write to describe each of your pins — and your repins. This will tell the search engines what your pin relates to so that when people search for that term, they can find that content. The more relevant the information is, and the “fresher” that information is (which refers to how recently it was posted), and the more links associated with that information, the better the organic search will be.

Jump Out of the Box
Have you always used direct mail, newspaper ads and/or radio ads to promote your business? Why not stir things up by thinking outside of your usual marketing box? Pinterest being the new kid on the block for business makes it interesting just be virtue of being the new, cool thing. Plus, Pinterest makes a great visual impact. Some people just learn (and make purchasing decisions) better by seeing it. Maybe you’ve been missing out on an entire customer niche by advertising in the same old places in the same old ways?

Spread the Word
Add social buttons (also called sharing buttons) to everything! Those are the cute little icons that represent all the different social media sites where you participate, and they provide a link back to those sites. (Click the Pinterest button here to go to the 123Print Pinterst page.) Put them on your website, blog, email signature, even your business card! While it’s true that customers and prospects can’t automatically, electronically link from your business card to your website or Pinterest page, you can list your URL on the card and it might make them curious enough to go check it out once they’re online!

Use Secret Boards to Collaborate
Just before announcing their new business pages, Pinterest announced new secret Pinterest boards. As you’ll see from the blog we just linked you to, the original intention was for consumers to use these secret boards, but small businesses can make good use of them, too! A secret board might be a great way to meet and collaborate with co-workers, vendors and investors online, but in a totally private environment. You could create one board for each month and then pin ideas for promotions, new products, events, and more. If you are a visual person, this can really help feed your inspiration for planning!

Here’s a guide to Pinterest business pages that will help you set up a new business page or show you how to convert an existing personal page to a business page.

Are you already using Pinterest for business? What have you learned that you can share with your fellow small-business people? Please leave a comment below.